That got Ben back to thinking about his own family. Jude was on his mind a lot over those days, as he reflected about the past and all the regrets he had about the way he’d handled things. If there was a league table for fathers, they’d have to invent a new bottom place just for Ben. The only thing he’d ever given Jude was the birthright of his own wild temperament. Hardly much of a legacy to pass down from father to son.
It was painful to contemplate all the ways he’d been such a letdown as a parent, just as it hurt to think about all the missing parts of their relationship. He’d never seen the boy grow up, never got to know him properly, or had the chance to do the things a father should do to bond with his child. He’d inherited Jude just as Jude had inherited him, two strangers brought together by a tragedy brutally foisted on them by the car crash that had ended the lives of Michaela and Simeon Arundel. Ben missed them both deeply, but he knew that Jude’s pain was deeper still and would never go away. Yet they’d barely ever talked about it. Ben regretted that too.
He wished Jude could be here now. He blamed himself for having missed him before his departure, and was trying not to blame Jeff for not having told him sooner that Jude was at Le Val, even if he understood Jeff’s reasons. Then, of course, there was the undeniable fact that Ben hadn’t exactly made himself easy to get in touch with. But seven whole weeks! If he’d only known, he’d have been here. They could have spent that time together. Maybe tried to start again.
Or maybe it would just have made things worse. He worried that it was too late to try and repair things between him and his son, just as it was probably too late for Ben to fix the profound rift between him and his ex-fiancée, Brooke Marcel. Ben already believed in his heart that Brooke would never speak to him again.
If Jude never wanted to either, then Ben would just have to accept that, too.
On the morning of the fourth day since leaving Salalah, the Svalgaard Andromeda completed its south-westerly route down the Yemeni coast and arrived dead on schedule at the Port of Djibouti. Under the watchful eye of the bosun and a sun so searingly hot that the sky was burned almost white, Jude and the rest of the crew laboured and sweated for most of the day unloading cargo. When the gruelling toil was finally done, word came down from the captain that they were free to hit port for a few hours that evening before setting out again the following morning.
Condor and Mitch were first off the ship, in gleeful search of cheap beer and loose women – both of which, being old hands on the East Africa run, they knew exactly where to find in sufficient quantities to gorge themselves to the maximum. Even the dour-faced Scagnetti was smiling at the prospect of being let loose on land for a while.
Jude resisted all invitations to come ashore and have a good time with a polite smile and a ‘That’s okay, you go and have fun.’ He spent the evening instead in his cabin, relaxing with a book. The next morning, he was predictably one of the only crew members who wasn’t suffering a thudding headache and queasy stomach from a serious night on the town. Nobody had been stabbed, robbed, or detained by the port police. Scagnetti appeared to have managed to go the whole night without getting into any bar brawls.
The ship departed from Djibouti shortly after 9 a.m. and cruised back out into the infinite blue on a north-easterly bearing that would carry them around the Horn of Africa before turning south.
Mid-afternoon, the first of that day’s incidents occurred.
Jude was far forward on the cargo deck, one of a small party of mostly hungover and groaning ABs working to clear up after the previous day’s unloading, when he happened to glance over the rail at the expanse of ocean ahead, and thought he saw a dark, strangely angular shape bobbing on the surface of the water directly in the ship’s path. It was only visible for a fleeting moment; then it was gone. He blinked and went closer to the rail to take another look.
Jude hadn’t been imagining things. As it turned out, what he’d seen was a discarded forty-foot steel shipping container apparently lost from another vessel, so waterlogged that it was floating too low on the surface to be picked up by the radar. He quickly alerted Ricky Marshall, the third mate, who relayed the information to the bridge, and the ship changed course a few degrees to avoid the potential hazard.
Marshall was pleased with him, explaining that ships lost containers all the time, running into thousands a year worldwide, and often failed – illegally – to report them. While such floating debris posed no serious risk to the thick hulls of larger vessels like the Andromeda, it was always worth steering clear. ‘You’ve got good eyes,’ he said to Jude. ‘Like to take a tour of the bridge?’
‘Really?’ It would be the first time Jude had ever been up there, and he lit up at the offer.
Marshall smiled at his excitement, and explained that especially observant ABs were often posted up on the bridge, as an extra pair of eyes always came in handy. ‘Plus,’ he added, ‘I hear you’re thinking of a naval career. You might be interested in seeing what goes on up there.’
And so, novice able-bodied seaman Jude Arundel followed the third mate up the steps and walkways to pay his first visit to the real nerve-centre of the ship, where he was introduced in person to Captain O’Keefe. The captain was a large, bearded man with a red face and a disinterested manner, who thanked Jude vaguely for having spotted the floating container and didn’t seem to care one way or the other about Marshall showing him around. O’Keefe returned to the conversation he’d been having with Wilson, the chief mate, who had the wheel. Jude caught a whiff of a scent from Wilson that could have been cheap after-shave, but smelled more like bourbon.
The bridge was the very top floor of the ship’s superstructure, accessible from an outer door and an inner hatch that led through to the rest of D Deck. It was shielded from the elements by tall windows that gave a commanding view for miles in every direction. On its roof was a railed open-air platform called the flying bridge, and extending some eighteen feet either side of it jutted steel observation walkways that overhung the ship’s sides, used for fine steering adjustments while docking.
Inside the control room itself, Jude felt as if he was inside a giant greenhouse. The deck seemed very far below, and so narrow as to create the illusion that the ship must be dangerously top-heavy and about to keel over on its side.
‘This is the conning station,’ Marshall said, showing Jude the bank of electronic equipment at the centre of the bridge. The second mate, Guzman, was lurking nearby, munching on a sandwich and ignoring them as he pored over his charts. ‘All these electronics are what we use for steering, nav and comm,’ Marshall explained. ‘Here you’ve got your GMDSS, short for Global Maritime Distress and Safety System, which feeds continuous weather updates. And this here is the radar,’ he said, pointing at another screen, showing what looked like a greenish-hued circular clock face divided into quadrants, with a continually sweeping hand moving round the centre. ‘The data stream on the right tells you the speed of any vessels we get close to, and their CPA. That’s the Closest Point of Approach – basically how long before its path crosses ours. Keeps us out of trouble.’
Jude was running his eye over the screens, drinking everything in. ‘This would be our position?’ he asked, pointing at a set of coordinates displayed on a readout.
‘That’s right. Updated continually via GPS. So we don’t lose our way.’
‘And that?’
Marshall seemed happy to answer as many questions as this eager young sailor could fire his way. ‘That’s the EOT. Stands for Engine Order Telegraph. It’s how the bridge tells the engine room to alter our speed. The panel next to it, right there, is the watertight door indicator. Every time a hatch seal opens anywhere on board, it lights up, green for open, red for shut. Alerts us if anything’s open that shouldn’t be in heavy weather.’
Fascinated by the wealth of equipment on